By: Sarju Shah - Posted on Wednesday, Oct 24th, 2006

　　Systems that run Battlefield 2 without a hitch will likely need few modifications to keep up with Battlefield 2142. But if you're on an older rig, you might need to upgrade a few parts. The two games are largely the same, but DICE gave 2142 a slightly updated graphical engine that has new animations and updated shaders.

　　We tested Battlefield 2142 using FRAPs and a 25-second driving scenario in the 48-person Suez Canal map. The frame rate results were consistent, but the numbers might be on the high side since the test doesn't include a lot of player models. We didn't play on populated servers or against other bots to keep our tests reproducible. The game also has a built-in frame rate cap of 100 frames per second. We increased graphics settings for our more powerful hardware to keep frame rates below the cap.

　　Game Settings

　　Battlefield 2142 has a few settings you can tweak to improve performance. We tested all the options to find out how much each setting affected frame-rate performance.

　　Graphics

　　Battlefield 2142 is based on the now-aging Battlefield 2 engine, which means it should run fine on moderate hardware. But if you're thinking of upgrading, we tested nearly 20 video cards to help you determine how much performance is enough.

　　CPU

　　We tested the game up and down the clock-speed ladder on our Intel Core 2 Duo and AMD Athlon 64 CPU-based systems. We even brought in some single core CPUs to see how they performed.

　　Memory

　　Moving up from 512MB to 1GB of system memory will help improve performance in most PC games. But it seems that even 2GB of RAM will give noticeable performance gains with Battlefield 2142.

　　What kind of setup do you use to play Battlefield 2142? Does it run well for you, or do you plan on upgrading? Share your experiences in the comments below!

Settings

　　If you have a moderately powerful system, you'll probably be able to get away with leaving all the settings on high and adjusting the resolution to suit your needs. Battlefield 2142 has a few performance sapping settings: Enhanced Lighting Effect, Dynamic Shadows, and Lighting. We recommend you drop the Enhanced Lighting Effect first, and start striking other features from there if you need to squeeze out a few more frames.

　　System Setup: AMD Athlon 64 FX-60 CPU @ 2.8GHz, Asus A8N32 SLI Deluxe, 2GB Corsair XMS Memory (1GB x 2), 160GB Seagate 7200.7 SATA Hard Disk Drive, Windows XP Professional SP2. Graphics Cards: GeForce 7600 GT 256MB. Graphics Drivers: Nvidia Forceware 91.47.

　　What kind of setup do you use to play Battlefield 2142? Does it run well for you, or do you plan on upgrading? Share your experiences in the comments below!

　　

Image Quality

High Settings vs. Medium Settings

　　

Medium Settings vs. Low Settings

　　

High Settings vs. Low Settings

　　What kind of setup do you use to play Battlefield 2142? Does it run well for you, or do you plan on upgrading? Share your experiences in the comments below!

More Image Quality

Enhanced Lighting Effect On vs Enhanced Lighting Effect Off

　　

Lighting High vs Lighting Low

　　

Dynamic Shadows On vs Dynamic Shadows Off

　　What kind of setup do you use to play Battlefield 2142? Does it run well for you, or do you plan on upgrading? Share your experiences in the comments below!

Graphics

All of our more powerful video cards ran Battlefield 2142 with relative ease. We had to increase antialiasing and anisotropic filtering settings to make sure our more powerful cards didn't hit the 100fps frame-rate cap.

　　Weaker cards can run the game just fine, but you will have to reduce a few quality settings to maintain frame rates in heavy firefights.

　　System Setup: Intel Core2 Extreme 2.93GHz, Intel 975X, 2GB Corsair XMS Memory (1GB x 2), 160GB Seagate 7200.7 SATA Hard Disk Drive, Windows XP Professional SP2. Graphics Cards: Graphics Cards: GeForce 7950 GX2 1GB , GeForce 7900 GTX 512MB, GeForce 7900 GS 256MB, GeForce 7600 GT 256MB, GeForce 6800 256MB, GeForce 6600GT 128MB, GeForce 6200 TC 64MB, Radeon X1950 XTX 512MB, Radeon X1900 XT 256MB, Radeon X1800 XL 256MB, Radeon X1600 XT 256MB, Radeon X850 XT 256MB, Radeon X800 XT 256MB, Radeon X600 XT 128MB, Radeon X300 SE 128MB. Graphics Drivers: Nvidia Forceware 91.47, ATI Catalyst 6.9 .

　　What kind of setup do you use to play Battlefield 2142? Does it run well for you, or do you plan on upgrading? Share your experiences in the comments below!

　　

Memory

You'll want 2GB of RAM in your system if you want Battlefield 2142 to run completely hitch-free. If you have the bare minimum 512MB of RAM, prepare for a stutter-fest and substantially increased load times. The middle-of-the-road 1GB configuration will suffice, but you will experience minor hitching on-screen.

　　

CPU

Battlefield 2142 didn't seem to benefit from a strong CPU in our tests, but keep in mind that our test doesn't account for AI controlled bots, nor the large scale action present on fully populated servers.

　　Our frame rates didn't budge an inch when we scaled our dual-core Core 2 and Athlon 64 CPUs down by nearly 1GHz. Our single core Athlon 64 FX-57 hardly lost any performance when we scaled it down, and Intel's dual-core Pentium Extreme Edition 955 also managed to keep up with our other CPUs. However, frame rates dropped once we moved down to the Pentium 4 3.2GHz CPU.

　　System Setup: AMD Athlon 64 FX-60 CPU, AMD Athlon 64 FX-57, Intel Core2 Extreme 2.93GHz, Intel Pentium processor Extreme Edition 955, Intel Pentium 4 3.2GHz, Intel 975X, Asus A8R32 SLI Deluxe, Intel 925XE, 512MB Corsair XMS Memory, 1GB (512MB x 2) Corsair XMS Memory, 2GB Corsair XMS Memory (1GB x 2), 160GB Seagate 7200.7 SATA Hard Disk Drive, Windows XP Professional SP2. Graphics Cards: GeForce 7900 GTX 512MB. Graphics Drivers: Nvidia Forceware 91.47.

　　What kind of setup do you use to play Battlefield 2142? Does it run well for you, or do you plan on upgrading? Share your experiences in the comments below!

CPU

Battlefield 2142 doesn't seem to benefit from a strong CPU very much, if at all. Our GeForce 7900 GTX didn't budge an inch when we scaled our dual core Core2 and Athlon 64 CPUs down by nearly 1GHz. Your video card should be first place to look for an immediate performance boost, come to the CPU you've exhausted all other options.

　　What kind of setup do you use to play Battlefield 2142? Does it run well for you, or do you plan on upgrading? Share your experiences in the comments below!